The handwritten letter penned by a then-83 year old woman nine years before her death in 1964. The letter is owned by a US Marine named Mike Delgado, who first caught Titanic fever at the age of 13 when his father took him to a Titanic exhibit. Delgado bought the letter in 2012 at a Titanic auction, along with Icard’s passport. Recently, Delgado posted pictures of his most prized possession on Reddit, and so far, the letter has gotten thousands of hits, tons of comments, and people who know French have even translated its haunting words for the world. Even though the RMS Titanic has been gone for almost 102 years, it is still amazing the Titanic survivors’ stories that are still coming out even to this day.

Rose Amélie Icard – Traveling as the made to Martha Evelyn Stone

Icard was 38 years old when she and the wife of George Nelson Stone got on board the RMS Titanic in Southampton, England. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, Icard talked about how the impact of ice and steel was enough to “threw us out of bed.” Icard asked an officer what was going on to an officer out in the hall, but he assured her that nothing was wrong and for the two women to return to bed, but they insisted that they could hear water coming into the ship. The women got dressed and went up on deck.

Once the Titanic started to sink, she and Stone were standing on the boat deck with one of the most famous couples on board, Isador and Ida Strauss. When it came time for people to go into the lifeboats, an officer offered both of the Strauss’ a chance to go into the boat, but Mr. Strauss did not want to go ahead of other men, so he refused. Ida Strauss was told to get into the boat, and she insisted that her maid go, but when she found out that her husband would not, according to Icard, “She hung on her husband’s neck while telling him, ‘We have been married for 50 years, we never were apart, I want to die with you.” Icard was moved by such a woman that refused to leave her husband, and she and Stone got into the lifeboat, which was number 6.

A Night That Lived On For 43 Years

Icard’s letter details Icard and Stone in lifeboat number 6, and the moment they got into it, the officer in charge told everyone in it that they had to get away from the Titanic before the suction from the gigantic shp would be so powerful that it would pull a lifeboat down with it. Icard stated that she grabbed the oars, and rowed so hard and fast, that her hands were bleeding and her wrists were very sore. Once the Titanic sank, the passengers in the water were moving around in the water and the descriptions that Icard gave sends shivers down the backs of people who read her handwritten note. Icard wrote, “suddenly, there was darkness, whole and inscrutable, shouts, horrible yells, rose in the middle of the creaks of the boat, then that was it.”

At the time that Icard wrote the letter, it was over 40 years after the Titanic sank, but even after so much time had passed, the horror of that night still haunted the maid-turned-seamstress. Icard stated that she still had nightmares about the Titanic; the screams and cries for help still haunted her dreams and did so until the day she died, which was in 1964.

Rose Amelie Icard was a 38 year old maid working for Martha Evelyn Stone on board the RMS Titanic. While on deck she was a witness to Isador and Ida Strauss refusing to go into a lifeboat, and she was also a witness to the death of over 1500 people. Icard’s hand-written letter is just another example of what happened the night the Titanic went down. There are many Titanic survivors stories, but the words of this maid, who later became a seamstress, are so vivid that some people got chills when they read the English translation of her original letter written in French. A man named Mike Delgado now owns both Icard’s letter and her passport, and decided to share it with the world, and even though her words are hard to read, it is important for people to read them so they understand exactly what it was like the night the Titanic sank.

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The Sad Story

Under the command of Edward Smith, the ship leaved Southampton with 2224 passengers aboard, including some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of poor emigrants from Europe seeking a new life in North America. The ship had advanced safety features, but there were not enough lifeboats to accommodate all of those aboard. Only 1,178 people can be carried in lifeboats.

Four days into the crossing and about 375 miles (600 km) south of Newfoundland, she hit an iceberg at 11:40 pm ship's time. The glancing collision caused Titanic's hull plates to buckle inwards along her starboard side and opened five of her sixteen watertight compartments to the sea; the ship gradually filled with water. Meanwhile, passengers and some crew members were evacuated in lifeboats, many of which were launched only partly loaded.

By 2:20 AM, the giant ship broke apart and foundered, with over 1000 people still aboard. Just under two hours after the sinking, the Cunard liner RMS Carpathia arrived and brought aboard about 705 survivors.

Small Numbers

74: The number of years it took to find the wreck of the Ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

64 : The number of lifeboats supposed to be aboard the ship.

20 : The number of lifeboats she actually carried.

65: Maximum capacity of a lifeboat.

28 : The number of people on board the first lifeboat.

2 : The number of workers killed during the construction process.

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The Unsinkable Ship !

Who doesn’t know about Titanic? The famous British ship that was designed to be unsinkable, but it finally sank on 15 April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during its long trip from Southampton, UK to New York City, US. About 1,500 people died, and the largest ship made at the time led to one of the biggest disasters in modern history.